


Hard to Find the Sweetness There Again

by Fericita



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-02-23 11:15:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23710621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fericita/pseuds/Fericita
Summary: Deleted Scene from A Mansion House Murder on AO3 by @broadwaybaggins @sagiow @mercurygray @jamesknoxpolka @jomiddlemarch@jomiddlemarch enabled/encouraged/goaded us all to write deleted scenes from our chapters, and this is what I envision as the backstory on Emma/Frank/Henry.  So, enjoy, and if it doesn’t fit with the murderous plots that the Mansion House story takes us too, this can just be an unrelated angsty piece to make us all sad.Though We Travel the World Over - deleted Mary/Jed scene by @jomiddlemarchThank you @the-spastic-fantastic for beta-ing and helping me decide why Frank Is In A Mood.
Relationships: Emma Green/Frank Stringfellow, Emma Green/Henry Hopkins
Comments: 13
Kudos: 8





	Hard to Find the Sweetness There Again

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Mansion House Murder](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23384296) by [BroadwayBaggins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BroadwayBaggins/pseuds/BroadwayBaggins), [Fericita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fericita/pseuds/Fericita), [MercuryGray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray), [middlemarch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch), [sagiow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagiow/pseuds/sagiow), [tortoiseshells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/pseuds/tortoiseshells). 



“I'm leaving.” 

Emma’s breath hitched at the sound of his voice. She turned at the words, clutching the roll of bandages in her hands, her body half hidden in the supply closet as she stared at him. Henry hadn’t been the first to speak to her, even after Belinda’s wedding when it had seemed, amidst the singing and clapping and dancing and smiles all around them, that they could go on being friends. Could maybe go on to be more.

“Where are you going?” She brushed some strands of hair from her face, catching her cheek and remembering when Henry had wiped a tear from it so gently that she had been startled by his nearness. Now the chasm between them was so vast it seemed impossible that he would ever do that again. That he had once done much more than merely brush her cheek to remove a tear.

He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at his own hands as they grasped his Bible, his thumb tucked into a passage she couldn’t guess at. He stayed silent.

“They're sending you away?”

He looked up and met her eyes and his face brought to mind those of the men and boys lying in agony in the beds nearby. How its lines and contours formed a map of worry and despair and she would have run to Dr. Foster for a diagnosis or medicine for the pain had he been a soldier just brought in. He took a breath as he answered.

“No, I asked to go. To be a field chaplain. 120th New York Infantry.”

She said nothing. She thought “Don’t go. Stay. You’d be a fool to go when so many need you here. When I need you here. Want you here.”

“I can’t stay.”

She startled at his reply, wondering if she had spoken the words aloud.

But the words had not left her lips. Nor had a kiss. Nor had a word of goodbye. 

***

“I'm staying. I can't go back.”

Frank had found her on visit to Tom’s grave. She was clutching flowers and he approached, hands empty, head bowed. He cried and said something about an Amish family and how tired he was and how he couldn’t shoot anyone anymore. He said how Tom had deserved better and maybe he didn’t, but he was going to try to earn it. And could he please earn it with her? Could he please show her how much he wanted to be a good man again?

Emma thought about how as children he had brandished wooden swords and pretended to be a pirate or a soldier or a spy, but cried when they found a dog, leg broken from a carriage wheel. How he had carried it back to the house, desperate for someone to help, and had cried harder when his father had shot the dog.

And she thought of her friends who he could have killed with his plot. Her friends - who had been her family when her own family didn’t want her. She didn't answer him then, but he kept visiting. And then her friends had won the war. And then they left. They left the hospital. Left Alexandria and the South. Left her.

So she said yes when he asked her to be his wife, and it was a small thing really, the wedding, not the affair Alice might have planned with peacocks and Apples a la Parisienne. It was fine to only invite their families. It meant so much to her mother and to his, and they were all still so tender around each other, unsure how to speak and what the rules were now that debutantes and hotel heiresses and Union nurses seemed to all be equally useless and outdated. And would her friends want to come anyway, to see her marry the dentist who had nearly blown up the hospital?

She had written to Mary about it and Frank had read the reply before she had, his charming smile slipping to a frown, his eyebrows drawn tight in irritation. He had read it in a mocking voice, the anger dark on his tongue, and she knew it would be hard to find sweetness there again.

“Jed remains shocked that Henry didn’t make you Mrs. Hopkins before Mr. Stringfellow took you for his bride, but we both hope you will be happy and well.”

There was little laughter in their house. Emma laughed bitterly when she was alone. She thought Jed and Mary would find it odd indeed that she had become a pastor’s wife, but not Henry’s. That she led sewing circles and how when the ladies marveled at her neat stitches, she didn’t tell them it was from carefully piecing together the edges of wounds. That even her Sunday School prayers felt petty and meaningless now that death was no longer a lurking presence. When she taught Sunday school, she wondered at the words and her fingers traced the Psalms, remembering how Henry had read them to dying boys and how she had found strength not just in the words but in the way he spoke them

Frank’s moods were unpleasant and it was exhausting to be poor. But it was worse to feel useless. To be unimportant. To have no tasks each day that she both enjoyed and excelled in. Wasn’t it a good thing that there were no feverish brows to mop, no infected wounds to clean, no dressings to apply? Shouldn’t she be grateful? So why did it feel like a loss?

Even though she couldn’t bring herself to write after that one disastrous letter, she wondered about Mary and Jed and Anne and, most of all, she wondered about Henry. Had he found what he wanted with the 120th New York? Or was he, like her, still wondering which words would have been better than those that had been their last?


End file.
